Monna Cecilia took them down, down, deep underneath the earth and into the ancient dungeons of Palazzo Salimbeni. And she showed them that the doors had been opened with the household keys that were given to the bride in the wedding ceremony, and she told them what they already knew: that these were caverns where no one had come for many years, for fear of the darkness. The old men in the wedding party were terrified, for they could not believe that the new bride had been given keys to all these secret doors, and they got more and more angry as they went, and more and more afraid. For they knew that there was much darkness down there, and that many things had happened in the past, before the Plague, that were best forgotten. So there they were, all the great men, walking after old Monna Cecilia with their torches, not believing their eyes.
At last they came to a room that was used in the old days for punishment, and now Monna Cecilia stopped, and all the men stopped too, and they heard the sound of someone crying. Without hesitation, the young groom rushed forward with his torch, and when the light reached the far corner of the cell, he saw his bride there, sitting on the floor in her fine blue nightgown. She was shivering with cold, and so afraid that she screamed when she saw the men, for she did not recognize anyone, even her own father.
Of course, they picked her up and brought her upstairs into the light, and they wrapped her in wool and gave her water to drink and nice things to eat, but Mina kept shaking and pushed them all away. Her father tried to talk to her, but she turned her head away and would not look at him. At last the poor man took her by the shoulders and asked his daughter, “Do you not remember that you are my little Mina?” But Mina pushed him away with a sneer and said, in a voice that was not hers, a voice as dark as death, “No,” she said, “I am not your Mina. My name is Lorenzo.”
You can imagine the horror of both families when they realized that Mina had lost her mind. The women started praying to the Virgin Mary, and the men started accusing each other of being bad fathers, and brothers, and of finding poor Mina so late. The only one who was calm was old Monna Cecilia, who sat down with Mina and stroked her hair and tried to make her speak again.
But Mina rocked back and forth and would not look at anyone until Monna Cecilia finally said, “Lorenzo, Lorenzo, my dear, I am Monna Cecilia. I know what they did to you!”
Now at last, Monna Mina looked at the old woman and started crying again. And Monna Cecilia embraced her and let her cry, for hours, until they fell asleep together on the wedding bed. For three days Monna Mina slept, and she had dreams, terrible dreams, and she woke up the whole house with her screams, until at last the families decided to call for Santa Caterina.
After she had heard the whole story, Santa Caterina understood that Monna Mina had become possessed by a spirit. But she was not afraid. She sat by the young woman’s bed all night and prayed without a pause, and by morning, Monna Mina woke up and remembered who she was.
There was much joy in the house, and everybody praised Santa Caterina, even though she scolded them and said that the praise was due only to Christ. But even in this hour of great joy, Monna Mina was still troubled, and when they asked her what was troubling her, she told them that she had a message for them, from Lorenzo. And that she could not rest until she had delivered it. You can imagine how everyone must have been terrified to hear her speak of this Lorenzo again, this spirit who had possessed her, but they said to her, “Very well, we are ready to hear the message.” But Monna Mina could not remember the message, and she started crying again, and everyone was horrified. Maybe, they worried to each other in hushed voices, she would lose her mind once more.
But now, the wise Santa Caterina handed Monna Mina a feather dipped in ink and said, “My dear, let Lorenzo write his message with your hand.”
“But I cannot write!” said Mina.
“No,” said Santa Caterina, “but if Lorenzo has the skill, his hand will move yours.”
So, Monna Mina took the feather and sat for a while, waiting for her hand to move, and Santa Caterina prayed for her. At last, Monna Mina got up without a word and went out onto the stairs like a sleepwalker and down, down, deep into the basement, with everyone following her. And when she came into the room where they found her, she went to the wall and started running her finger over it, as if she was writing, and the men came forward with torches to watch what she was doing. They asked her what she was writing, but Monna Mina said, “Just read!” And when they told her that her writing was invisible, she said, “No, it is right there, do you not see?”
Now Santa Caterina had the good idea to send a boy to fetch clothes dye from her father’s workshop, and she made Monna Mina dip her finger in the dye and write once again what she had already written before. And Monna Mina filled the whole wall, this woman who had never learned to read or write, and what she wrote made all the great men cold with fear. This was the message that the spirit Lorenzo made Monna Mina write:
A plague on both your houses
You shall all perish in fire and gore
Your children forever wail under a mad moon
Till you undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin
And Giulietta wakes to behold her Romeo
When Monna Mina had finished writing, she fell into the arms of her groom, calling him by his name, and asked him to take her away from the room, as her task was over. So he did, crying with relief, and brought her upstairs, into the light, and Monna Mina never spoke with the voice of Lorenzo again. But she never forgot what had happened to her, and decided that she wanted to understand who this Lorenzo had been, and why he had spoken through her, even though her father and father-in-law did everything in their power to keep the truth from her.
Monna Mina was a stubborn woman, a true Tolomei. She spent many hours with old Monna Cecilia when her husband was away on business, listening to stories of the past, and asking many questions. And although the old woman was afraid at first, she also knew that it would give her peace to pass on this heavy burden to someone else, so that the truth would not die with her.
Monna Cecilia told Monna Mina that just where she had written that terrible curse on the wall, was where a young monk named Friar Lorenzo had written the same words many, many years earlier, in his own blood. It was the room where they had kept and tortured him until he died.
“But who?” Monna Mina asked, leaning over the table to clasp Monna Cecilia’s gnarled hands in her own. “Who did this to him, and why?”
“A man,” Monna Cecilia said, her head drooping with sorrow, “whom I have long since stopped thinking of as my father.”
THIS MAN, MONNA CECILIA explained, had ruled the Salimbeni household in the era of the great Plague, and he had ruled it like a tyrant. Some people tried to pardon him by saying that, when he was a little boy, Tolomei bandits had killed his mother before his very eyes, but that does not excuse a man for doing the same to others. And that was what Salimbeni did. He was cruel to his enemies, and severe on his family; whenever he was tired of his wives, he locked them away in the countryside and instructed the servants to never feed them quite enough. And as soon as they were dead, he married anew. As he grew older, his wives grew younger, but in the end not even youth could please him anymore, and in his desperation he developed an unnatural desire for a young woman whose parents he himself had ordered killed. Her name was Giulietta.